


principles of modern dance

by Lirazel



Series: the toaster 'verse [2]
Category: Infinite (Band), K-POP RPF, K-pop, Korean Pop, Kpop-Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> “Just because white chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream is perfectly amazing and I’d be happy to eat it for the rest of my life doesn’t mean I don’t also want to have chocolate chocolate chip peanut butter sometimes.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Dongwoo and Woohyun just want Sunggyu, but he’s not being very cooperative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	principles of modern dance

 

"Nam-goon, why do we always have to meet under the duvet when we talk about things like this?” Dongwoo asks, flopping down on his stomach and letting Woohyun pull the blanket over their heads. It’s not like it bothers him or anything—it reminds him of making forts with his sisters when he was little, and sometimes with Woohyun it leads to cuddling (or more), so he’s perfectly happy to go along with it. He just doesn’t know _why_. It seems more like something he himself would do than something Woohyun would insist on. Yet insist he does.

“Because I conduct all my most important business under the duvet,” Woohyun says, settling himself, his arm warm against Dongwoo’s. Woohyun has really nice arms. And really nice everything, actually. And he knows it.

Dongwoo can’t help but laugh, bumping his shoulder into Woohyun’s. “But Nam-goon, when you’re a powerful businessman, are you really going to hold all of your meetings under a duvet?”

“Of course I am. I’m going to be so good at what I do that no one will dare to question me. I’ll get a giant bed in the conference room instead of a conference table and have the world’s biggest, fluffiest duvet specially made for me.”

Dongwoo throws his head back laughing, the blanket above him dipping and rising with the motion. Woohyun’s so _weird_. Dongwoo’s so glad he ran into him—literally, both of them ending up on the floor on their asses—that day when Woohyun was greasing his way around the fine arts building, checking out the dancers. Of course, Dongwoo hadn’t known that that’s why he was there; after apologizing, he struck up a conversation with the guy and Woohyun had somehow manipulated Dongwoo into inviting him to come watch him practice for his next recital (Dongwoo still isn’t sure how he managed that. Woohyun is _slippery_. Maybe he’ll ask Sungyeol sometime—he would probably know). That, of course, had ended up with Woohyun shoving him up against the wall till the barre that the ballerinas use dug into his back, stripping his clothes off of him, and giving him the best blowjob Dongwoo had ever had (Woohyun is ridiculously talented at anything involving his mouth. You should hear him sing!). It was a hell of a first encounter, and life has been every bit as exciting ever since. Yeah, he’s really glad he ran into him—Dongwoo doesn’t want to imagine what his life would be like without plotting sessions under the duvet.

“Now,” Woohyun says as Dongwoo’s laughter finally dies down. “To our first order of business: how are we going to seduce Sunggyu-hyung?”

This isn’t the first time they’ve talked about this—as a matter of fact, they’ve been discussing it for months now. But that was just whenever Sunggyu would leave the room and they would stare at his ass as he left. Or at lunch when they need to distract themselves from Myungsoo being too soppy over Sungyeol. Or when they’re in bed fooling around and Woohyun will whisper all the things he wants to see Sunggyu do to Dongwoo (it’s really, really hot. And the things Woohyun is good with involving his mouth? Also includes dirty talk, just in case you wanted to know). But they haven’t _seriously_ discussed it yet, because this is the first time they’ve met under the duvet.

“The problem is,” Woohyun says, sounding very serious, “that he’s totally oblivious.”

“True,” Dongwoo agrees. Woohyun’s been dropping hints for months now to their roommate, and he’s been anything but subtle. Contrary to popular belief, Woohyun actually _can_ be subtle when he wants to be (as all the people he’s scammed out of their hard-earned money—through perfectly legal means, of course—could testify), he just doesn’t often ‘find it advantageous,’ as he says. ‘Dongwoo, why use a lock-pick when there’s a perfectly good bomb sitting right there? They make such satisfying explosions, you know?’

“And he can be a bitchy tight-ass when he’s mad.”

“Also true.” Sunggyu is often the definition of anal. And not in the sexy way, unfortunately for Dongwoo and Woohyun.

“Normally I’d say we just jump him and rip all his clothes off, but he’d probably get pissed.”

“Probably.” They both take a moment to shake their heads at the ridiculousness of some people who get upset about things like that.

“Plus,” Woohyun continues, “he’s so busy all the time trying to kill himself via double major that it’s hard to get his attention.”

“Well,” Dongwoo points out, “you actually do still get it a lot. When you leave your wet towels on the floor in the bathroom on purpose to annoy him and when you get rid of his clothes you don’t like without asking him first and when you sing too loud in the shower and when we scrape up the hardwood floors when the bed or the sofa or the kitchen table drags across them when we have sex.”

“That doesn’t count,” Woohyun dismisses. “I’m not actually trying then.”

“Oh.”

“Okay, so, ideas.” Woohyun clicks his pen, holding it above the memo pad in front of him. “What if we spike all his tea with soju and get him really drunk and _then_ jump him?”

Dongwoo cocks his head. “He’ll taste the soju, and that’s not very ethical, is it?” It doesn’t sound very ethical, but sometimes Woohyun’s brain works in different ways than other people’s.

“Dongwoo,” Woohyun says patiently, as though he’s explained this before—and he probably has, but Dongwoo’s not always the best at paying attention because he’s easily distracted (especially by Woohyun, who’s the most distracting distraction Dongwoo has ever seen. Except maybe for Sunggyu). “This is how brainstorming works—you say whatever comes into your head without censure, and no one can comment on it till the end. We’re generating ideas here. The flow is vital.”

Dongwoo doesn’t care to figure out what half of that means; he’s too hung up on one part of it. “ _Whatever_ pops into our heads?” That seems kind of dangerous to Dongwoo.

But: “Anything,” Woohyun confirms.

Well, okay, then. If that’s the way this works. “What if we tell him we’ve been affected by alien space pollen and if we don’t have sex with him we’ll die?”

Woohyun just looks at him for a moment, and Dongwoo squirms. “Okay, that’s a thought,” Woohyun says finally, and that’s why Dongwoo loves him. Anyone else would tell him he’s an idiot and not to make any more suggestions, but Woohyun actually meant it when he said ‘anything.’ Dongwoo knows his own mind is quite creative, and lots of people think he’s stupid and make sure he knows it, but Woohyun has never, ever made him feel that way. Dongwoo hasn’t told Woohyun that he loves him because he isn’t sure whether that’s the kind of relationship they have. Besides, it doesn’t matter if Woohyun knows. It’s enough for Dongwoo that he and Woohyun live together and play together and have really great sex together. Dongwoo doesn’t ask for more than that.

“It’s maybe not a good idea,” Dongwoo says.

The blank look snaps off Woohyun’s face. “No, we’re considering _every_ idea. Even the most outlandish might have a detail that could prove useful later. I’ll write it down.”

Dongwoo beams widely as Woohyun writes in his careful handwriting on his legal pad. Probably all this stuff about the right way to brainstorm is from one of his business textbooks or lectures—Woohyun thinks that business policies apply to everything in life, and Dongwoo isn’t going to bother trying to convince him otherwise, especially when application of economic theory has lead to some really hot times in bed.

Suddenly Dongwoo winces when brighter light and cooler air slaps him in the face as the duvet flies back. He and Woohyun look up to see Sunggyu standing over them, blinking at them from behind his glasses. He looks really tired, and Dongwoo is reminded of his constant worry these days: that Sunggyu isn’t getting enough sleep and that he’ll work himself sick.

“Are one of you cooking dinner?” Sunggyu demands. 

Woohyun grins widely. “Well, look at this! Observe: the creature emerges from its lair, foraging for a meal after its long hibernation. I didn’t think we’d ever see you again, hyung!”

Dongwoo laughs as Sunggyu glares at Woohyun. “Food. Are you making it.”

“I’m having dinner with Nicole and Key,” Woohyun says. Sunggyu grimaces at the thought of making something himself, but Woohyun takes mercy on him—most people wouldn’t associate that word with Woohyun, but he’s surprisingly generous and maternal with the people he really cares about. “There’s some stuff in the fridge for you and Dongwoo. You can heat it up in the microwave, you impatient philistine, but it’s really better if you put it in the oven, though I don’t really expect your plebian palate to appreciate the difference.”

Dongwoo throws his arms around Woohyun. “Thanks, Woohyunnie.”

Woohyun smiles and presses a kiss on Dongwoo’s nose. “I have to take care of my boys, don’t I?” he says, cuddling Dongwoo closer.

Sunggyu rolls his eyes and starts to walk away, Dongwoo and Woohyun staring after him—his ass even looks good in those schlubby sweatpants. Damn.

“Hey!” Woohyun yells just as Sunggyu reaches the bedroom door. “You just disrupted a very important collaboration of minds. You can’t just walk away without setting things to rights!” He turns to Dongwoo. “He has no sense of responsibility, absolutely none.”

With a pained look on his face, Sunggyu stomps back over and jerks the duvet back into place, muttering something about mental cases as his footsteps fade away.

“We heard that!” Woohyun yells, then turns his attention back to Dongwoo. “Okay, what if we’re just really direct?”

 

 

“You didn’t!” Sungyeol shouts, voice both gleeful and incredulous. “You didn’t!”

Dongwoo flushes as Myungsoo laughs hysterically and Hoya smirks. “We did….”

“You’re unbelievable!” Sungyeol continues. “You had _sex_ on his _bed_? Did you really think he’d see you two going at it and shrug and join you? Really? Suggyu-hyung?”

“So it didn’t work,” Woohyun shrugs, taking a sip of his tea and acting completely unbothered, though Dongwoo can tell he’s a bit frustrated at the failure of their latest phase of Operation: Seduce Sunggyu. 

“Of course it didn’t work, you pabos!” Sungyeol says, slapping his hand on the table and letting a still-laughing Myungsoo lean against him. “Only you two could possibly think it would! Seriously, I’m completely shocked he didn’t kill you both on the spot!”

Honestly, Dongwoo is a little surprised, too. He hadn’t been completely sold on the idea of having Sunggyu walk in on them naked and fooling around on Sunggyu’s bed, but Woohyun had insisted it had a shot at working. “Come on, he’d have to be an automaton to be able to resist you and me,” he’d assured Dongwoo between kisses. “Do you have any idea how hot we are?”

But Sunggyu hadn’t seemed very impressed when he walked into his room after his last class to find his two roommates naked and going at it on his bed. After the first moment of blank shock, the fury that rose in his eyes was terrifying to behold. Dongwoo and Woohyun froze at the sight of it, tensing in fear of Sunggyu blowing up. But then their hyung closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when he opened his eyes again, he had himself back under control.

“Get. Out,” he’d said, very precisely. Dongwoo looked at Woohyun.

“You’re welcome to join us, hyung—it might be just the stress-reliever you need, with all the hard work you’ve been doing and—“

“OUT.”

Dongwoo awkwardly pulled away from Woohyun and rose off the bed on unsteady legs, but Woohyun didn’t move. When Sunggyu saw that he wasn’t being obeyed, he grabbed Woohyun by the arm and hurled him out of the room. Then he turned to Dongwoo. “He is _such_ a bad influence on you.”

“Sorry, hyung…?”

“Just go, Dongwoo.”

Woohyun was waiting with his arms crossed when Dongwoo joined him in the hall—which looked really funny since he was still completely naked (and hard)—and the door slammed behind them. “Well, that could have been worse.”

A bellow echoed out from Sunggyu’s room, cutting off any response Dongwoo might have made. 

“NAM WOOHYUN, WHY DOES MY BED SMELL LIKE BANANAS?”

“I told you we should have used the strawberry lube,” Dongwoo had sighed.

“That’s disgusting and disrespectful, hyungs,” Sungjong says, unsmiling, dragging Dongwoo out of his memories. He turns his fierce gaze to Dongwoo. “I really expect better of you, hyung.”

Myungsoo is still laughing, leaning against Sungyeol, who nudges him away with his elbow (which Myungsoo ignores, of course). “Oh, come on, Sungjongie, it’s not like Gyu hasn’t walked in on them a thousand times before—they barely ever make it to their room before they go at it, and besides, his room is right next to theirs—he’s forced to listen to them all night anyway,” Sungyeol points out.

“They should learn to control themselves,” Sungjong insists. “And act like adults.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sungyeol scoffs. “I’m sure you’re completely controlled whenever you’re with _her_.” He points across the cafeteria and everyone turns to look to where Sungjong’s girlfriend Bora is sitting with her friends. She’s not even pretending to pay attention to what Dasom is saying, instead staring across the room at Sungjong with an appreciative, almost hungry, look on her face. When she sees she has the table’s attention, she smiles and winks, then turns back to her friends.

Sungyeol and Myungsoo are laughing again, and Dongwoo can’t help but join them. “Yeah, I’ll bet Miss Bora is _all about_ control,” Sungyeol gasps.

“Mind your own business, hyung,” Sungjong hisses. “Or I’ll tell Woohyun-hyung what I heard you and Myungsoo doing last week.” With that, he grabs his tray, pushes his chair back with a swing of his hips, and walks over to Bora’s table. She looks really pleased that he’s joined her, despite the scowl on his face.

Sungyeol only looks the slightest bit abashed by Sungjong’s interesting threat. Dongwoo is intrigued—he’ll have to ask Myungsoo about it later. Maybe it’s something he and Woohyun haven’t tried yet. They’re always up for new things.

“Here’s what I don’t understand, hyung,” Hoya says to Woohyun, getting the conversation back on track. “Why isn’t Dongwoo-hyung enough for you? Why do you two want Sunggyu-hyung so bad?”

Dongwoo and Woohyun exchange a glance; the others just don’t understand.

“It’s not a matter of enough,” Woohyun says in a longsuffering tone. “Of course Dongwoo is enough for me—he’s enough for anyone.” Dongwoo smiles happily; he likes when Woohyun praises him, and Woohyun does it quite a lot. “It’s like ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” Myungsoo echoes, face crinkling. “You use ice cream?”

“No! Well, yes, sometimes, but this is an analogy. Keep up, Kim Myungsoo. Just because white chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream is perfectly amazing and I’d be happy to eat it for the rest of my life doesn’t mean I don’t also want to have chocolate chocolate chip peanut butter sometimes.”

“I just like vanilla,” Myungsoo says innocently, and Sungyeol chokes as Hoya and Dongwoo exchange grins and Woohyun snorts. 

“Of course you do, Kim Myungsoo,” Woohyun says. “Of course you do.”

“Well, I think you’re going to have to be content with just white chocolate whatever,” Sungyeol says, recovering. “You’ll never get Sunggyu-hyung into bed.”

Woohyun leans forward immediately, eyes gleaming. “Care to put some money on that?”

“No,” Sungyeol scoffs. “I never wager against you—I don’t trust you to play fair.”

“Well, of course not,” Woohyun says, sitting back and grinning wolfishly—Dongwoo thinks he looks really hot like that. “What’s the fun in playing fair?” He winks at Dongwoo and laces their fingers together, making Dongwoo glow with warmth. Woohyun is so _perfect_ ; he’ll even show Dongwoo he cares when they’re in public. “Don’t worry, we’ll get him in the end. We came up with a _lot_ of ideas.”

 

 

“JANG DONGWOO!” Sunggyu almost never raises his voice at Dongwoo, but he’s steaming mad as he barrels through the door to their apartment, slamming it shut behind him. “Get your ass out here!”

He jerks to a stop when he sees the girl standing in the living room, long hair swinging loose down her back, a big pink bow in her hair. She spins around, and _fuck_ , it’s one of Dongwoo’s sisters.

“Noona!” Sunggyu gasps, bowing low. Damn that Jang Dongwoo—he hadn’t told Sunggyu that one of his sisters was planning to visit, and now Sunggyu has embarrassed himself in front of her—cursing and yelling for her brother—and he feels the heat rising in his cheeks.

But she just blinks at him, cocking her head to the side in confusion. “Hyung, what are you doing?”

Holy shit, that’s not Dongwoo’s sister that’s— “Dongwoo!” Sunggyu has to grab onto the back of the couch to keep himself upright. “What the hell are you _doing_?”

Dongwoo grins brightly. “Woohyun says I look good in a dress. He left this for me to try on. What do you think, hyung?” He twirls around, the dress rising with the motion and revealing his leanly muscled dancer’s legs. When he stops, he blinks his innocent eyes at Sunggyu, the lashes even longer than usual, and his lips are glistening pink and Sunggyu is going to _kill_ Woohyun and—

Sunggyu croaks.

“Are you okay, hyung?” Dongwoo hurries over—because of course he does, he’s Dongwoo—and presses a hand to Sunggyu’s forehead. “You sounded really upset when you came in and—“

Upset! Yes, Sunggyu had been upset! And for good reason! He drags his eyes away from Dongwoo—drag, oh my _God_ —and focuses on the framed Nell poster on the wall. No, not upset—he’d been angry. He thinks back over his day, tugging the anger back around him, very definitely _not_ looking straight at Dongwoo—a dress? Really? And a long wig and a bow and makeup and—

“What,” Sunggyu begins with a snap, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a handful of photographs. “Are these?”

Dongwoo takes them from them, looking through them, and Sunggyu doesn’t have to be looking at him (very definitely isn’t looking at him) to know he’s grinning; he can hear it in Dongwoo’s voice. “Aren’t they good, hyung? We borrowed Myungsoo’s camera to take them. I really like this one a lot, Woohyunnie and I went to the pool and—“

“ _Why were they in my notebook_?”

Dongwoo is taken aback at Sunggyu’s tone, and sometimes Sunggyu can’t believe how completely oblivious that boy can be. “I put them there, of course.”

“ _Why_?”

Dongwoo’s voice brightens—Sunggyu still isn’t looking at him—and he hurries to explain. “I was watching this show the other night, hyung, one of my science shows, you know!”

Yes, Sunggyu knows. He’s had a variation on this conversation before when he caught Dongwoo making a list of things he wanted to do before the world ended in 2013 and when Dongwoo had once excitedly explained over dinner that aliens had built the pyramids—‘Are you sure it wasn’t a sci-fi show, Dongwoo? Are you sure it wasn’t on a kids’ channel?’ But Dongwoo remains completely convinced that the shows he watches are hard science, and nothing anyone says can talk him out of it.

“What did the show say, Dongwoo?” Sunggyus sighs. “And what does it have to do with me opening my notebook at the start of class and having half-naked pictures of you and Woohyun falling out _during my lecture_?” 

Sunggyu doesn’t think he’ll ever recover from the humiliation, especially when Hayoung had shot him a look that clearly said she thought he was some kind of pervert, bringing his porn to class—and he _likes_ Hayoung, too! But even that wasn’t as bad as when he swung by the grocery store earlier and another photo—this time of Woohyun and Dongwoo in various states of undress with their mouths very occupied with each other—had fallen out of his wallet when he’d gone to pay. The mother behind him in line had gasped aloud and slapped hands over her children’s eyes, but the toothless older man at the cashier had just laughed and winked, and that was really worse. By the time Sunggyu had made it home, he’d been _furious_ , and that fury is rising again. 

He’s been exhausted lately, studying for upcoming exams every spare moment he gets, singing his voice raw in the practice rooms, trying not to crack under the pressure of two majors—he will not let his parents have the satisfaction of being proved right that it was too much for him—and this latest round of torture from his dongsaengs is not helping his mental health. Couldn’t they have picked another time in the semester to act like complete lunatics?

“Oh, it’s subliminal messaging, hyung!” Dongwoo sounds so very _pleased_ with himself, and usually that makes Sunggyu happy (he has a soft spot for Dongwoo’s sweetness, even if he doesn’t like to admit it), but this time it’s like nails on a chalkboard. “Like what they do in stores where they play secret messages about how you’re hungry or how you could really use a new washing machine and then you buy what they want you to buy? Like that?”

Sunggyu stares very hard at the poster. “What.”

“You can do all sorts of things with it, hyung! Convince yourself to stop smoking! Or learn Spanish in your sleep! It’s very powerful, hyung!”

Sunggyu closes his eyes, screwing them up so tight that it almost hurts, and takes a deep breath. “Does this also have something to do with why you and Woohyun keep ‘forgetting’ to take towels into the bathroom and wandering around the house naked?”

Dongwoo beams. “You’re so smart, hyung.”

Sunggyu buries his face in his hands for a moment. Of course. Of course this is how Dongwoo thinks. Of course it is. Why is he even slightly surprised? “Dongwoo,” he says calmly—calmly, really. “You really thought that if I kept seeing you and Woohyun naked that this would make me want you two?”

“Well, yeah,” Dongwoo says as though it’s completely obvious. Then his excitement builds again. “Did it work, hyung? Woohyun said he didn’t think it would, but it was time to try one of my ideas this time, so he let me and—“

“ _No_ , Dongwoo, it didn’t work!” He immediately feels bad for snapping, especially when he risks a glance at Dongwoo and sees his crestfallen expression. It’s somehow so, so much worse than usual with that wig and that makeup and _fuck_. He softens his voice, though he’s trembling a little. “It caused me some real embarrassment today, Dongwoo. People saw, and that’s not exactly something I can explain.”

“Oh.” Dongwoo’s voice is very, very small, and Sunggyu knows he feels _terrible_ , and that makes Sunggyu feel terrible, especially when Dongwoo adds in that same tiny voice, “I’m sorry, hyung. I didn’t mean to—“

“It’s fine, Dongwoo, I forgive you,” Sunggyu cuts him off, feeling so very tired now that his anger has dissipated. It can never last long with Dongwoo, because even when he makes messes he never _means_ to: he doesn’t have a guileful bone in his body. It’s why Sunggyu has mostly been trying to aim all his fury at this whole thing at Woohyun instead—Woohyun should know better. Actually, Sunggyu knows that he _does_ know better, he just doesn’t care. And Woohyun wonders why Sunggyu hasn’t given in. Sex _in his bed_ with _banana-flavored lube_ and is Woohyun _crazy_? Sunggyu knows the answer to that question. “Just think next time, okay?”

“Okay, hyung.” Then Dongwoo throws his arms around Sunggyu, startling him, and there’s all that fake hair in Sunggyu’s face and—he slams his eyes shut again, focusing on the fact that Dongwoo feels slender and muscular against him, not soft and round like a girl would. Somehow that thought doesn’t help. Any at all. He pulls away hurriedly.

“I’m really sorry, hyung. You’re not going to stay mad at me are you?”

Fuck, when Sunggyu looks at him, Dongwoo is gnawing on his shiny pink lip. “No,” Sunggyu manages. “Not—no.”

“And you’re still coming to come to my recital, right? It’s this weekend, hyung, remember?”

Oh, great, that’s just exactly what Sunggyu needs: the thought of Dongwoo _dancing_ on stage, his body moving _with_ the music, not just to it, confident and sexy and—

“I need to go study,” Sunggyu says quickly, voice only cracking a little. “No more subliminal messaging, though, okay, Dongwoo?”

“Okay, hyung,” Dongwoo agrees cheerfully enough now that he knows his hyung isn’t angry at him. 

“And take off that wig, it’s freaking me out—you look just like your sisters,” Sunggyu adds before rushing out of the room.

He really, really needs to be studying for his numerical analysis final later this week, but surely a ten minute rest won’t hurt anything? He hasn’t had more than a few hours of sleep a night in…well, longer than he can remember since his mind is so sleep-scratchy. He’s mostly just been grabbing an hour here and there with his cheek pressed against a page of one of his open books, blinking his gritty eyes and forcing himself to stare down at the pages again when he finds himself awake again. He even fell asleep in the practice room the other night _in the middle of a song_. If it hadn’t been for Niel coming in early to practice himself, Sunggyu probably would have slept for the next twenty-four hours straight, and as it is he barely made it to his first class on time. Trying to find time in between all that to convince Woohyun and Dongwoo to give up on their trashy attempts to seduce him has been nearly impossible. He winces, remembering, and lets himself collapse onto his bed and is just about to sigh in relief at how good it feels to actually be laying down for once when he looks up at the ceiling and discovers the life-sized picture of Woohyun and Dongwoo, shirtless and in the tub together, grinning down at him from his ceiling.

Knowing his vocal performance professor is going to kill him in the morning but not caring, Sunggyu buries his face in his pillow and screams and screams. 

 

 

“Where the hell is my toaster?” Woohyun grumbles, rummaging around in the bottom cabinets and then emerging with his cutting board. Dongwoo is sitting on the counter, his bare feet dangling down as he munches on some celery. Woohyun grabs him by the hips and slides him over a few inches so he has enough room to work. “Did we ever figure that out?” 

“It’s not at Sungyeol’s place?” Dongwoo asks around a mouthful of green gunk.

“It’s technically still my place, and no, I searched high and low for it twice. It’s not there.” Woohyun grabs his Asahi ceramic knife—a thing of beauty, really, and a birthday present from his chef brother—and starts in on the vegetables. 

“Did they ever pay you this month’s rent?” Dongwoo has moved on from celery to carrots now. 

“Not yet, they haven’t. I’m going to have to sit on Sungyeol until he forks over the money. I just don’t understand what happened to my toaster. It’s not here, it’s not there. Where could it be?” There’s something really soothing about chopping vegetables with a really good knife, the crisp sound it makes, the way you barely have to put any effort into the cut. 

Dongwoo shrugs. “I don’t know.” He doesn’t sound too bothered, but then he wouldn’t. He probably doesn’t even know how to use a toaster—honestly, before Woohyun came into his life, Dongwoo ate worse than Sungyeol and Myungsoo, and that is saying something. But Dongwoo appreciates Woohyun’s skills and likes to _show_ his appreciation in really mindblowing ways, so Woohyun usually overlooks his lack of culinary expertise.

“The dress didn’t work, Woohyun. I don’t think hyung liked it very much,” Dongwoo changes the subject, gnawing on a carrot. 

“Then he’s blind, because you looked _gorgeous_ ,” Woohyun says empathically, dumping a bunch of the vegetables from his cutting board into a pot. 

“Yeah?” Dongwoo always looks so pleased when Woohyun compliments him, like Woohyun has given him this wonderful gift, and since Woohyun likes to give credit where it’s due, he gets to see nice glowy Dongwoo a lot. It’s impossible, Woohyun has learned, to be anything but happy when Dongwoo is smiling that way. 

“Yes,” Woohyun agrees empathically, pausing in his chopping to give Dongwoo a kiss. When he pulls back, there are bits of orange stuck in Dongwoo’s teeth when he grins, but it’s Dongwoo, so it’s endearing, not gross. “And we had lots of fun with it ourselves, didn’t we? So it wasn’t a waste.”

Dongwoo’s grin widens. “Yeah, last night was good.”

“It was _excellent_.” If Woohyun were doing anything other than cooking right now, he’d have tossed it to the side and moved to stand between Dongwoo’s legs, jerking him down for a kiss heated by the memories, and they’d probably end up having sex on the kitchen floor again. But Woohyun _is_ cooking, and he doesn’t let anything interrupt that, not even Dongwoo.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY TEXTBOOKS, NAM WOOHYUN?”

Woohyun jumps at the sound of Sunggyu’s shouting, almost slicing his finger off. Or at least slicing _into_ it—ceramic knives won’t cut through bone, of course. Dongwoo ducks his head as though that might make him less noticeable (Woohyun does not point out that he’s sitting on top of the counter in a multi-colored hoodie and bright yellow sweat pants and that he’s slightly less noticeable than a neon sign). “I guess he woke up,” Dongwoo whispers.

Sunggyu storms out of the hallway and into the living area. His glasses are crooked, his left cheek red—Woohyun knows it’s from sleeping on it on his desk—his hair a mess, and fuck if he doesn’t look completely shaggable. “I said,” Sunggyu repeats, hands on his hips and eyes narrow, though this time at a much more acceptable volume, “What have you done with my textbooks?”

“Good evening, hyung,” Woohyun says calmly. “I see you’ve awoken from your nap. Will you be joining us for dinner at the table like a civilized human being or will you be eating in your room again?”

Sunggyu slams his palm down on the counter beside Dongwoo, making Dongwoo jump and whimper. “I was asleep for fifteen minutes, Nam Woohyun, and when I woke up again, all my books and notebooks and my _laptop_ were gone! And I cannot find them, even though I’ve torn every inch of your room apart.”

Woohyun winces; he’s going to have to straighten up his and Dongwoo’s room right after dinner then; he can’t stand an untidy living environment; it clutters the mind. But he supposes it’s a small price to pay if they can get Sunggyu where they want him. Which is in said room, on the bed, naked and screaming their names.

“Someone must know that you need a break from so much studying and has taken it upon himself to remove the temptation from your sight so that you can enjoy a quiet evening completely free from stressful studying,” Woohyun answers. 

Honestly, doesn’t Sunggyu know that he does these things out of genuine concern for Sunggyu’s wellbeing? Woohyun knows good and well that Sunggyu is more than capable of balancing two majors as he’d chosen to do when he wanted to study vocal performance but his parents had been horrified by the idea. He’d mollified them a bit by choosing to major in engineering as well, and while he’s scarily good at both of them, for some reason he thinks he needs to maintain perfect grades in both areas of study. Woohyun, though, has done enough reading to know that there’s no appreciable difference in life performance (read: salary over the course of career) between A students and C students, and he’s been trying to make Sunggyu believe it since they met, but so far he hasn’t had any luck. Sunggyu seems intent on killing himself with hard work, and he’s never appreciative when Woohyun tries to save him. 

“If you don’t tell me where my things are, I am going to kill you, do you understand me?” Suggyu grits through clenched teeth. His eyes are narrow and despite the fact that he’s trying to look menacing, he looks more like a hamster than ever. A frustrating, shaggable hamster.

Woohyun sighs. “Big words, hyung, when I’m the one with the knife.” That doesn’t cut through bone, but Woohyun doesn’t say anything about that because A) Sunggyu probably has no idea that it won’t and B) it can still do plenty of damage to softer areas of the body. Not that Woohyun ever would. But it’s nice to know he has the option.

Sunggyu just stares at him for a moment, then turns very slowly. “Dongwoo?”

Dongwoo has been trying to shrink into himself through the whole conversation, and he looks like a small frightened animal when he sees Sunggyu’s attention is directed at him. “Yes, hyung?” he asks in a squeaky voice.

“You’ll tell me where my things are, won’t you, Dongwoo?”

It’s fascinating to Woohyun just how ridiculous Sunggyu sounds when he’s trying to sound sweet despite his anger. 

“Uh….”

Dongwoo glances at Woohyun and Woohyun shoots him a warning glare. _Don’t you dare crumble, Jang Dongwoo. Remember the plan._ Woohyun is sure that if they can only get Sunggyu to think about something other than school for an entire evening that surely Sunggyu will realize how badly he needs to be laid and how hot his roommates are and the night will turn out satisfactorily for all involved. And the mouthwatering—and highly culinarily creative, if he does say so himself—meal Woohyun is currently putting together for the three of them to share won’t hurt either.

“Dongwoo?” Sunggyu prompts, and again he’s trying to sound sweet and encouraging and understanding, but his anger is bleeding through, and then Woohyun sees Dongwoo wilt.

He _wouldn’t_. “No, Dongwoo, don’t—!”

“They’re in the bathtub.” The words rush out of Dongwoo’s mouth like an avalanche of ruined plans, and Woohyun moans, dropping his knife and slapping his forehead. 

“Dongwoo!” Dongwoo is as close to perfect as any human being could possibly be, but sometimes he lets Woohyun down so badly.

“Thank you, Dongwoo,” Sunggyu says smugly, shooting Woohyun a superior look before turning to head in the direction of the bathroom. He pauses, though, to smirk over his shoulder—it’s not a flattering look on his little hamster face, and it pisses Woohyun off even more than he still wants the stupid hamster hyung. “And I will be eating in my room, thank you, Woohyun. You can leave the tray at the door.”

“Uuuuuugh!” Woohyun explodes in frustration as he hears Sunggyu tug the shower curtain back. “Dongwoo! How could you do this to us?”

“I’m sorry, Nam-goon,” Dongwoo says sorrowfully, and fuck, he does sound so very sorry that Woohyun knows he won’t be able to stay mad for very long: he melts for Dongwoo faster than ice cream on the pavement in August. “Hyung is really scary when he’s mad.”

“He just wants you to think that,” Woohyun says with a sigh. “He’s all talk, Dongwoo, he really is.”

“He’s scary,” Dongwoo insists, chewing on his bottom lip, his eyes so apologetic, and Woohyun has to lean forward and kiss him to reassure him.

“Okay.” Woohyun sighs again and looks down at the diced vegetables on the cutting board. “At least we’ll eat well tonight. That’ll help our brains perform at optimum capacity so we can come up with another plan.”

 

 

  
“I swear they’re trying to drive me out of my mind. There’s no other explanation for this kind of behavior. They want to see me hauled away in a straight jacket and locked away forever.”

Hoya smiles at Sunggyu’s complaints, leaning back in his chair. They’re in one of the study rooms in the library where they’ve met for the past two years on Tuesday and Thursday nights to study together, Sunggyu for his engineering classes, Hoya for his pre-law courses. At first it was just because everyone else in their circle of friends was either majoring in the arts—Dongwoo, Myungsoo, Sungyeol and Sungjong—or never seems to study while maintaining perfect grades—Woohyun—but it’s become one of the highlights of Sunggyu’s week. Hoya is so much less excessive or just plain weird than the rest of the guys, and Sunggyu appreciates his level head. Sometimes he feels like he’s completely surrounded by performance artists who are using him as the subject of a documentary they’re secretly filming. Hoya at least acts like a person.

“Maybe if it was Woohyun and Sungyeol, I’d agree with you,” Hoya says. “But it’s Woohyun and Dongwoo, and Dongwoo doesn’t take pleasure in other people’s pain. I think they probably both just really want you.”

“It’s so _annoying_. I don’t understand when they have time to come up with and execute these ridiculous scenarios when they both have classes _and_ they’re constantly screwing each other. Where do they get the time?”

Hoya grins. “Woohyun prides himself on his time-management skills, you know that, hyung.”

“Well, even so, you’d think they’d have gotten bored by now and moved on to torturing someone else. But it’s like they’re completely incapable of giving up.”

“So why don’t you just sleep with them once and put an end to the whole thing?” Hoya suggests reasonably. “I know you like guys, and Myungsoo and Sungyeol say they’re both hot.”

“It’s not a matter of hot,” Sunggyu insists. They _are_ both hot, almost obscenely attractive, actually, and Sunggyu had thought so long before he started being inundated with their naked forms both in pictorial and physical form for days on end. “They’re just both such little kids. It’s all about the sex for them and playing around, and that’s just not my thing. I don’t have time for that, for one thing, and that’s not what I want. Why on earth would I get involved in their games?”

“So what is it that you want, then? You’re looking for something more serious?” Hoya asks interestedly. 

Sunggyu shrugs helplessly. “I just know I want something steadier, something less likely to blow up in my face. I mean—look at Myungsoo and Sungyeol.”

“Please don’t make me,” Hoya says dryly. 

Sunggyu rolls his eyes in acknowledgment. “I know they’re ridiculous in a lot of ways, but it’s clear that they’re dedicated to each other. They’re best friends, and it isn’t just a fling for them. They waited for each other for over a year. That proves it matters to them, right?”

“As much as anything can matter to those ten-year-olds.” But then Hoya looks thoughtful. “Dongwoo and Woohyun have been together for a long time now, hyung. Almost two years.”

“Yeah, but are they actually _together_?” Sunggyu shoves a mess of papers aside and leans forward. “What even are they? They’re together constantly and they have more sex than should be humanly possible—“ He winces at how well he knows that to be true. “—but are they dating? Are they boyfriends? Or are they just together till the sex stops being good or Woohyun gets bored or something? Are they exclusive? Who even knows what’s going on between them? I don’t even know, and I’m not sure they do either.”

“Maybe they’re too busy having sex to have the d.t.r. talk,” Hoya suggests with a grin.

Oh, God. Sunggyu ignores that. “I’m just saying, I don’t want to get pulled into that hurricane of hormones. I’m not a freshman anymore; I don’t have room for that kind of thing in my schedule.”

Hoya snorts. “Well, they’re right about one thing, hyung.”

Sunggyu isn’t really sure he wants to know—Hoya’s sense of humor isn’t always the most appropriate—but he asks anyway. “What’s that?” 

“You are _way_ too tense these days. You probably could do with getting laid.”

Sunggyu drops his head to the textbook in front of him. Maybe if he hits his head hard enough he’ll lose consciousness and be shipped off to the hospital where he can have a nice long rest away from exam schedules and insane friends who are way too concerned about his sex life. But he knows he’ll never be that lucky.

 

[source](http://namnambunny.tumblr.com/post/32869089987/120405-gimpo-airport-c-spotlight-do-not-edit)

When Woohyun and Dongwoo stumble through the door to the apartment, Woohyun’s lips on Dongwoo’s neck as Dongwoo giggles away, the lights are all off. Which is strange, because Sunggyu should be home right now—his numerical analysis final is tomorrow (Woohyun knows the due dates of every assignment in both Sunggyu and Dongwoo’s classes), so he’s definitely going to be studying right now. It’s possible he’s at the library, Woohyun supposes absently as he drags his tongue up to the spot just behind Dongwoo’s ear—Dongwoo just giggles more helplessly and maybe Woohyun shouldn’t find that hot, but he does…but then he finds every single thing about Dongwoo hot—but he knows Sunggyu prefers to study in the comfort of his own room when he’s not studying with Hoya—that way if he falls asleep (as he almost inevitably does), at least he’s already at home and he knows Woohyun will wake him up in time for his classes. (Woohyun knows he can be a bit heartless in his attempts to distract Sunggyu, but he _does_ take classes quite seriously, and he’d never let Sunggyu miss a lecture.) 

So Woohyun had fully expected Sunggyu to be at home tonight; he’d even explained to Dongwoo that they needed to be quiet so as not to disturb Sunggyu’s studying. It’s one thing for them to have hidden all of Sunggyu’s things a few days ago, it’s another entirely to interrupt his studying the night before a big final. 

But he guesses they won’t have to worry about that, not if Sunggyu’s gone elsewhere to study. Woohyun’s not going to complain. If there’s anything he knows about, it’s how to seize opportunities when they present themselves—just ask his financial advisor and his 401(k). 

“So I read a very informative article today on Vector autoregression that I think could have some quite interesting…practical applications,” he hisses against Dongwoo’s ear, punctuating the comment with a squeeze of his ass and a nibble of his earlobe. Dongwoo lets out an appreciative half-moan half-squeal in reply.

“What kind of applications?” Dongwoo demands, hands scrabbling at Woohyun’s shoulders. He’s wriggling against Woohyun already, and fuck yeah, this is going to be a good night. Not that any night with Dongwoo is anything less than amazing, but still.

“Well, I was thinking in terms of linear interdependencies among multiple time series—“ Woohyun starts, but he doesn’t get to elaborate.

“We need to talk.”

The voice from the shadows swaddling the armchair is quiet, but it still scares Woohyun nearly to death, his arms crushing around Dongwoo in a reflexive attempt at protection, and Dongwoo shrieks.

“What the _fuck_ , hyung?” Woohyun demands. He isn’t much of one for cursing aloud (in his own head is an entirely different story)—too coarse, and it loses you respect in the business world because it makes people think you can’t control your emotions—but sometimes there’s just no other words that will suffice. “You scared away a year of my life! Why are you sitting in the dark? Shouldn’t you be studying?”

“Get your hand out of Dongwoo’s pants and both of you come and sit down,” the shadow that is Sunggyu says, voice perfectly flat, and for some reason the hair on the back of Woohyun’s neck rises to attention (which isn’t what Woohyun is used to rising to attention when Sunggyu is around, to be quite honest).

But he withdraws his hand from where it was cupping Dongwoo’s ass underneath his boxers and reaches to turn on the overhead lights.

“Don’t.” Sunggyu’s voice freezes Woohyun. “I have a headache.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, hyung!” Dongwoo is instantly all concern, rushing over to Sunggyu and almost tripping over the coffee table in the process. “Have you taken something for it? Do you need me to run to the drug store? I can make you some tea or—“

Sunggyu waves him away. “Just sit down, both you. Now.”

Woohyun isn’t usually one to obey without question, especially Sunggyu, but for some reason he’s feeling kind of cold and wary at the moment, so he moves to join Dongwoo on the couch. “Uh, hyung, would you mind if we had a little light?” Normally he’d just turn one of the smaller lights on himself, but this is all so weird and completely not-Sunggyu-like that he’s half-scared to do anything at all. Or as close to scared as Nam Woohyun can possibly be, which isn’t very.

Sunggyu switches on the floor lamp, angling it away from himself and toward Woohyun and Dongwoo; they both blink at the sudden brightness, Woohyun raising a hand to shield his eyes.

“Is that good enough for you, Woohyun-ssi?”

Sunggyu’s tone is still flat, but it’s also sort of…terrifying? What the hell is going on? 

“Um, yes. Yes, that’s great, hyung. Thank you.”

“Good. Then I’ll cut to the chase. You two need to move out.”

Woohyun’s jaw drops and he doesn’t have to look at Dongwoo to know his has too. “ _What_?”

“This is my apartment,” Sunggyu continues as though they aren’t gaping at him in shock. “My name is on the lease, I paid the security deposit. After three years of roommates, I made the decision to live alone for a reason. I’m still not sure how the two of you ended up moving in, but it doesn’t matter now. You’re moving out. Tomorrow.”

“Hyung!” Dongwoo sounds like he’s about to start crying. “Hyung!”

“You can’t kick us out!” Woohyun is feeling a little panicked himself, and Woohyun _never_ feels panicked. He never allows himself to be in a situation where he doesn’t have enough control—enough options to ensure an advantageous conclusion to proceedings—to make sure that he isn’t panicked. He knows his and Dongwoo’s attempts to seduce Sunggyu have been mildly annoying to their hyung, but he didn’t see this coming at _all_ , and how is that even possible? His macroeconomics professor always says that Woohyun is better at predicting the market than anyone he’s ever met in his life. So how did this _happen_?

“Where will we go, hyung?” Dongwoo wails, and he’s definitely crying now. In any other circumstances Woohyun would already have his arms around him, but right now he’s a little bit…paralyzed. 

“Do you want us to end up on the street?” Woohyun demands. 

“Don’t exaggerate, Woohyun,” Sunggyu says, still in that completely-un-Sunggyu-like voice. “The apartment Sungyeol and Myungsoo are living in is still technically yours, and they’re sharing a room. That place can easily fit the four of you.”

Oh, fuck! That’s almost _worse_. “You can’t really want to send me back there, hyung!” Woohyun protests. “Not to live with those disgusting lovebirds and their weirdness!” Myungsoo is always hanging all over Sungyeol, latching onto his back or staring at him with this besotted look on his face—it’s ridiculous. Woohyun would go crazy in less than a day if he were forced to live with that.

“Oh, yes,” Sunggyu says, a bit of dryness creeping into his tone. “Because heaven forbid that your delicate sensibilities should be subject to displays of affection.”

Woohyun is not so dense that he doesn’t hear the implications of that. He decides to try a different tactic as Dongwoo hiccups away beside him. “Hyung. Be reasonable here—“

“REASONABLE!” The roar comes out of nowhere, making both Woohyun and Dongwoo jump and Dongwoo’s gasped-in hiccup to transform into a frightened burp. Sunggyu is on his feet now, and through the glare of that light, Woohyun can make out the silhouette of his hands all fisted up. Uh-oh. “REASONABLE? I’m so far past reasonable I don’t even remember the last time I saw it! You two _pushed_ me here! You _went to my advisor_ and asked him to tell me that having sex would help me reduce my stress levels! I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE REASONABLE IS ANYMORE!”

Suddenly a bunch of pieces of paper are hurled their way, one of them slicing into Woohyun’s cheek before they float to cover the ground and both Woohyun and Dongwoo’s laps. Woohyun carefully picks up one of the sheets and scans it. Oh, yes. It’s the article about sex reducing stress that he’d found—in a very prestigious medical journal, he’ll add; Woohyun is always fastidious about his sources—and that he and Dongwoo had made five hundred copies of (with a brief interlude because Dongwoo had always wanted to know what it was like to copy his bare ass and Woohyun never protests when Dongwoo wants to bare said ass) and then stuffed between the pages of all of Sunggyu’s books last night while he was drooling on his keyboard. 

“Now, hyung,” Woohyun tries to start again, but Sunggyu doesn’t give him the chance.

“Do you two even have any conception of how miserable you’re making me? You are _destroying my life_. It’s already hard enough with the course load I have, but now not only are you bent on distracting me so I can barely study, you’re also determined to rob my advisor of all respect he has for me? The one whose good opinion I’ll need when I ask him to write me letters of recommendation? Are you _serious_? I’ve always known you two were immature, but now I know you’re actually devious. I can’t believe I call you my friends!”

Oh. That…stings. Sure, Woohyun knows he has a tendency of taking things a bit far, especially when Dongwoo is along for the ride. And of course he knew that they were being a bit distracting, but he really believes Sunggyu _needs_ some sort of distraction, needs some lightness in his life so he won’t work himself to death. Is this the way Sunggyu really sees them?

Dongwoo starts crying again, big sobs that wrack his body; Woohyn has his arms around him in an instant. “Don’t _talk_ to him like that, hyung,” Woohyun snaps. “Blame me. You know perfectly well Dongwoo would never do anything he thought would hurt you. How can you say that to him?”

“Oh, trust me, Nam Woohyun, it’s you I blame. And it’s your forehead I’m going to staple my final to when I get it back and there’s a giant F on it. Because I’m _going_ to fail it, and it will be entirely your fault.”

Dongwoo is shaking with tears in Woohyun’s arms, Sunggyu is trembling with emotion across the room, and Woohyun knows it’s going to be up to him to keep a level head, to negotiate a compromise. Because he and Dongwoo cannot move out of this apartment. They can’t. And not just because Myungyeol and their domestic cuteness would drive him absolutely insane. But because the idea of Sunggyu living alone, of him forgetting to eat half the time and the other half living on overcooked ramyun or stale rice cakes, of him falling asleep while studying and not having someone to make sure he gets to class the next morning, of him wearing perpetually dirty and wrinkled clothing because there’s no one there to wash and iron his clothes, of him not _smiling_ despite himself at the zillion silly things Dongwoo does—that picture, the one that’s rising with digital clarity in Woohyun’s mind, THX for the ultimate in sound and picture quality, is so absolutely horrifying that it makes Woohyun feel sick. He can’t leave Sunggyu, he can’t let Dongwoo leave Sunggyu, they _have_ to be together, that’s how this _works_. It’s why Woohyun and Dongwoo moved in in the first place. Sunggyu needs Woohyun to keep his life straight, he needs Dongwoo to make him laugh. Dongwoo needs Woohyun to look after all the adult demands of life, he needs Sunggyu to keep him grounded in this world when he threatens to float off into his own. And Woohyun needs both of them to remind him that there’s more to life than stock prices and networking. They _need_ each other. Anything less than the three of them together is unacceptable. Period.

But of course he can’t say that. He has to construct the right argument, one that convinces Sunggyu to give this another shot, one that even Sunggyu would be insane not to take advantage of.

“Hyung. You’re right.”

Sunggyu blinks. “What?”

Okay, so Woohyun doesn’t say that very often to other people; that doesn’t mean that Sunggyu has to act like Woohyun just started spouting off in fluent ancient Sumerian or something. Woohyun grits his teeth. _Remember your objective. Never lose sight of your goal._ “We went too far and we’re abjectly sorry,” he says, succeeding in keeping his voice level. 

“Hyung, we’re so sorry!” Dongwoo manages between sobs, and he’s so clearly heartbroken, so clearly sincere that Sunggyu looks a little less adamant than he did a moment before. Woohyun reaches out to the coffee table and grabs a Kleenex from the box he keeps there for just these occasions, bringing it to Dongwoo’s nose.

“Blow,” he commands, and Dongwoo obeys, a trumpeting sound that’s half-sob. Woohyun tosses the tissue into the waste basket by the couch and turns back to a confused-faced Sunggyu.

“It was absolutely unconscionable the way we put your reputation at risk. And we will make it up to you.”

Sunggyu’s eyes narrow. “I don’t even want to know how you—“

“We will make it up to you,” Woohyun interrupts, raising his voice, “by promising to cease all such actions immediately.”

Dongwoo stops crying. “We will?”

Sunggyu stares. “You will?”

“We will,” Woohyun confirms.

“But…you never give up on something when you want it. _Never_ ,” Sunggyu says, sounding very much as if Woohyun had just announced that he’s changing his major to fashion design.

“I have never found myself in a circumstance like this,” Woohyun says, and maybe nothing has ever been more true. “But Dongwoo and I moving out is unthinkable. Will you allow us to stay here if we set aside our attempts to seduce you?”

Now it’s Sunggyu’s turn to gape. 

“We also agree to restrict all actions that are sexual in nature to our bedroom,” Woohyun continues.

“We do?”

“You do?”

“We do. And to endeavor to keep our escapades as quiet as possible out of respect for our housemate.” Woohyun considers this. “Though I can’t make any guarantees on that one.” 

“We will?”

“You will?”

“We will.”

Dongwoo is very still in Woohyun’s arms, and Sunggyu is just staring at them. “You’re serious?” he says finally, eyebrows dipping in that way they do.

Woohyun desperately wants to fire off some sarcastic remark at that, but he knows when to be professional. “I am.”

Sunggyu takes a deep, shuddering breath and sits back down on his chair—Woohyun’s eyes have adjusted to the light now, so he can see. “Just like that?”

Woohyun ignores that. “Do we have an agreement, hyung?”

Sunggyu makes a very strange face, like he’s just taken a bite out of something bitter. “I—yeah. Okay. If you really won’t—it’s a deal.”

Relief courses warm through Woohyun’s veins, though he manages to keep any reaction off his face. Dongwoo pops out of Woohyun’s arms and to his feet, hurrying over to throw his arms around Sunggyu. “Oh, thank you, hyung! We promise to be good from now on—I don’t want to leave you alone, I’d miss you so much and Woohyun would, too, and—“

“Okay, okay,” Sunggyu says, patting Dongwoo on the back. “I’m glad you’re happy. Now let me go because I’m going to need my bones to be whole if I’m going to take my final tomorrow morning.”

Dongwoo releases him, bouncing back over to Woohyun to give him a happy kiss—though he pulls away abruptly as soon as it gets good, casting a guilty look at Sunggyu.

Sunggyu sighs. “You can kiss each other, Dongwoo. Just try to keep your clothes on till you make it to your room, okay?”

Dongwoo agrees joyfully, now springing off to call Hoya and tell him that they don’t have to move—not that Hoya ever knew they were going to have to in the first place, but it won’t do any good to tell Dongwoo that.

Woohyun rises and he and Sunggyu look at each other for a long moment, and it suddenly occurs to Woohyun just how _tired_ Sunggyu looks, worn out and weary. Fuck. They really have taken it too far, haven’t they?

He kind of really wants to go over and pull Sunggyu into his arms and let Sunggyu rest his head on his shoulder. Maybe carry him to bed and tuck him in and curl up beside him, with Dongwoo climbing under the covers, too (Woohyun and Dongwoo’s bed is big enough for this—trust him, he’s measured). But he knows this isn’t going to happen, so he just says, “Shouldn’t you be studying, hyung? Your final is at 8:00.”

Woohyun can’t read the look Sunggyu is giving him, and that makes him a little uncomfortable, because he’s taken _courses_ in body language and facial expression recognition—invaluable for a business career, really. But Sunggyu just nods abruptly after a moment and moves towards his room. “Yes. I should be studying.”

Woohyun’s isn’t used to misery, and feeling it now is unacceptable, so he heads towards his own bedroom, finding Dongwoo on the bed jabbering away into his phone. He climbs up beside him and drops his head into Dongwoo’s lap, and Dongwoo brushes his fingers through his hair immediately, not pausing in his chatter for a moment. Eventually he hangs up and the two end up cuddling till they fall asleep—even Woohyun isn’t up for sex after he’s shattered his own dream out for the sake of the good of the one he’s been dreaming about (and don’t tell Sungyeol he had that thought—he’ll never live it down)—but it’s only almost perfect. Sunggyu stays up all night studying on the other side of the wall.

 

 

[source](http://biyeol.tumblr.com/)

Sunggyu does not fail his final. As a matter of fact, he gets a 97. Which is three points less than he wants it to be, but considering all he’s been through in the last couple of weeks, he thinks it’s quite an accomplishment. Besides, he can do some extra work to make up for it, he’s sure, since now he can study without interruption.

True to their word (or Woohyun’s word, but since Dongwoo is pretty much the most agreeable person in the world, there was no doubt he’d go along with it), Woohyun and Dongwoo have only had sex in their bedroom with the door closed since the night of their agreement (actually, they’ve probably also have sex lots of other places, too, places Sunggyu doesn’t want to know about, but when they’re in the _apartment_ , they only have it in the bedroom, which is all Sunggyu can ask). They still aren’t all that quiet, actually, but he knows they’re trying and honestly he didn’t expect much on that front (he just cranks up Nell really loud—even if Nell isn’t exactly the cranking kind of music). And more importantly, all of their seduction attempts—even just walking from the bedroom to the bathroom naked, which honestly they’d done now and then even before the whole Seduce Sunggyu thing started—have halted. 

All of which _should_ have Sunggyu weeping with gratitude, except that things in the apartment have been really…weird since that night. Dongwoo has been strangely subdued, his normally bubbly personality set only on mildly sunny, and Woohyun, even more strangely, has been excessively polite but almost…impersonal. He still brings Sunggyu his meals on a tray, still wakes Sunggyu up when he doesn’t hear his alarm, still washes and irons and folds all of Sunggyu’s clothes (and Sunggyu never really realized until now just how much of the household stuff Woohyun actually _does_. He feels kind of guilty when he thinks about it), but he doesn’t say much whenever he crosses Sunggyu’s path. 

Honestly, their changes in behavior make Sunggyu a little…nervous? Tense? Disappointed? He doesn’t really know, actually. All he knows is that he’s never thought much about how much he actually enjoys the moments when Dongwoo would burst into his room with some story to share, briefly interrupting Sunggyu’s monotonous studying with his joyful self. He never considered that he actually sort of looks forward to nagging Woohyun and having Woohyun shoot back snark in return. Sunggyu has had some bad roommates (he’s tried to erase from his mind every single moment he spent in his dorm room his first semester, though he hasn’t managed to delete the horrifying memories entirely), and while being an audience for Woohyun and Dongwoo’s sexcapades (as Hoya calls them) has often made him angry, they’re honestly his favorite people he’s lived with because despite his protests he actually genuinely likes them (yes, even Woohyun. Yeah, he was surprised, too). He finds that he’s really glad he didn’t actually make them move out after all, because he knows now that he would definitely miss them. In fact, he sort of misses them now, even though they’re still here.

He doesn’t let any of that show, though. Instead he just shifts his studying from numerical analysis to plasticity mechanics and reminds himself how truly grateful he is that he doesn’t have to be terrified anymore to open any of his folders in class for fear of subjecting his classmates to softcore porn. 

But by the time Saturday rolls around and the whole apartment still feels like the aftermath of a war zone, Sunggyu is kind of…worried. Because Dongwoo’s recital is tonight and Dongwoo seems so…down. And Sunggyu doesn’t want Dongwoo to be distracted; he knows what a big deal this recital is, knows how hard Dongwoo has been working for it, knows how big a part of his grade it is. Sunggyu will feel terrible if Dongwoo’s lowered enthusiasm affects his performance.

So he waits until Woohyun is out with Sungyeol somewhere for lunch, and then he seeks Dongwoo out in the living room. Dongwoo is stretching while watching some TV show—something with aliens, of course—and Sunggyu pauses for a moment to admire his flexibility. No, there’s no denying that his roommates are both devastatingly attractive. If only he didn’t want more than that in a relationship. Like, an actual relationship.

Dongwoo has gone from standing facing the TV to bowing his back until his hands reach the floor, and when he does, he spots Sunggyu. “Hyung!” he says, his face red from hanging upside down, and though his voice is cheerful, it’s very…quiet. And not nearly as puppy-like in its excitement as Sunggyu is used to. Yeah, he really needs to talk to Dongwoo. 

Dongwoo leverages himself upright, then spins around to face him. “Am I disturbing you, hyung?” he asks, his beautiful eyes awash with concern. “Am I being too loud? I was just trying to warm myself up a little bit, I didn’t mean to be so loud, I can go to the practice room instead or I can turn down the TV or—“

Sunggyu feels guilt churning his insides; Dongwoo’s really being extraordinarily quiet, especially for Dongwoo. Did his outburst really put him this much on edge that he thinks the only possible reason Sunggyu could want to talk to him is to chastise him? “No, Dongwoo, you’re fine. You weren’t disturbing me.”

“Oh! Oh, good. Well, was there something you needed, hyung?”

Sunggyu sighs, walking towards him and taking Dongwoo’s face into his hands, tilting their foreheads together. He does this a lot when Dongwoo is at his most hyper and uncontainable, when it seems like he might get totally lost in the hysteria of his own mind and he needs someone to calm him down, center and ground him, but he’s never done it when Dongwoo is calm. Dongwoo blinks, more than a little cross-eyed from trying to focus on Sunggyu’s face so close. It’s adorable, actually. Of course it is. “I’m sorry, Dongwoo.” Dongwoo blinks again, this time in surprise, tries to jerk back, but Sunggyu holds him still. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t feel comfortable in your home anymore.”

Dongwoo bites his lip, looking unsettled. “It’s _your_ home, hyung, your name is on the lease and—“

Right now Sunggyu is really regretting those words. “It’s your home, too,” he interrupts. “Yours and Woohyun’s.” He sighs again. “I don’t know how it happened, but it did. And you don’t need to be worrying every single moment whether you’ll disturb me. All I needed from you two was for you to quit with the seduction plot.”

Dongwoo’s eyes have gone really big. “Really?”

“Really. I mean, I greatly appreciate the fact that you’re only having sex in your own room and that you’re trying to be a little quieter when you know I’m studying, but other than that you really didn’t have to change your behavior.”

A grin, Dongwoo-wide, breaks out on his face, and Sunggyu feels the warmth of relief. “You mean you aren’t still mad at us, hyung?” Dongwoo looks so very hopeful that Sunggyu has the strange urge to kiss him. He’s not comfortable with that, though, any more than he was comfortable the night of their argument when he felt the urge to kiss Woohyun when Woohyun asked him if he shouldn’t be studying. It wasn’t the studying reminder that had made Sunggyu want to kiss him—it was the fact that Woohyun knew exactly when his final was, the fact that he cared enough to know, the fact that Sunggyu wasn’t even surprised that he knew because of _course_ he knew—Woohyun knows every detail of his life. It was a totally ridiculous moment, and Sunggyu has tried not to think about it much. He’s used to being physically attracted to his roommates—they are, after all, both very sexy in different ways. But the kind of kissing he wanted to do with Woohyun then, the kind he wants to do with Dongwoo now isn’t about sexual attraction at all (well, at least not much). It’s about something else entirely, something Sunggyu knows he can’t have with his roommates. 

So he releases Dongwoo’s face and takes a half-step back. “No, Dongwoo, I’m not still mad at you.” That’s not _entirely_ true; he does still harbor quite a bit of anger at the things they put him through. But that’s past now, and they’re both trying so hard to do better, and he doesn’t want Dongwoo worrying about this anymore. He wants him back to his Tigger-y Dongwoo self. “I’m not mad at you at all.”

The grin breaks into giggles and Dongwoo throws himself at him in a hug. “Oh, hyung, I was so worried!” Dongwoo’s arms are warm and strong, but he’s still a little bit smaller than Sunggyu, just enough that Sunggyu can feel protective of him. It’s easy to feel protective of Dongwoo, with all his open-hearted simplicity. Sunggyu hugs him back.

“Don’t worry anymore, Woo-ah,” Sunggyu commands. “Just get ready for your recital tonight, okay? I know you’re going to be great.”

Dongwoo is still grinning as he lets Sunggyu go. “It’s going to be _crazy_ , hyung! I can’t wait for you to see it! You have to go early with Woohyun so you can all sit right at the front in the middle, okay? If you sit any further back, I won’t be able to see you because of the lights, and I want to be able to see you two, okay?”

Sunggyu agrees, and sure enough, that evening he finds himself sitting in the front row of the auditorium a full hour and a half before the recital is due to start, squinting down at the program and hoping this won’t be the worst thing he’s ever seen (“Engima: The Essence of the Avacado: A Dance”? Really?). Woohyun, sitting beside him, is talking furiously with Sungyeol, and Sunggyu knows one of their evil plotting sessions when he sees it. He winces, hoping he isn’t their chosen victim, though from the cool way Woohyun greeted him when he came in, he doubts he is; Hoya, on the other side of him, is a much more likely target. Sungyeol is completely ignoring the fact that Myungsoo has his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder as he flips through the images in his camera, and Sungjong, sitting beside Hoya and looking extremely fashionably dressed, is texting someone, probably his girlfriend, whose seat he’s saving with his jacket. They’re all here, Sunggyu’s best friends, the group he somehow managed to fall into after his first two years of college were dominated by studying and singing and almost nothing else. He’s still not sure how they managed to insert themselves into his life, and sometimes he still finds them the most annoying people on the planet, but he really is grateful for them. When they’re not sticking their noses into his sex life (or lack thereof), of course.

Sunggyu brought his notes with him, so he spends the wait studying, as Hoya and Sungjong talk on one side of him and Sungyeol and Woohyun plot mayhem on the other. About fifteen minutes before curtain, Bora arrives, dropping down into the seat beside Sungjong and giving him a kiss. Her arrival jolts Sunggyu out of his study-induced haze, and he glances around to find that the entire auditorium is packed full—there are even people standing in the aisles along the sides, leaning against the walls. He sees Minsoo and Niel and their group of friends over to the left, that Eunji girl Hoya likes with some other girls towards the middle. Jinki, who’s sitting next to Woohyun’s friend Key, catches Sunggyu’s eye and waves happily before laughing at something Jonghyun said. It’s like everyone they know is here.

“What the hell are so many people doing here?” Sunggyu asks. “It’s _modern dance_.”

“Are you kidding me, hyung?” Sungyeol demands, leaning over Woohyun and dislodging Myungsoo’s head from his shoulder in the process. “It’s _modern dance_! This is going to be the most hilarious thing that happens on campus this semester!”

“They’re here to laugh?” Sunggyu says blankly. That doesn’t seem right. Sure, modern dance is pretty ridiculous, but Dongwoo has worked so hard, and the thought of all these people here just to jeer at him kind of makes Sunggyu want to punch someone. 

Sungjong clearly understands the look on Sunggyu’s face, because he hurries to reassure Sunggyu. “I’m sure they won’t laugh at Dongwoo-hyung. You know how good he is—he’ll blow them all away even if the rest of it is horrible.”

“They _better_ not laugh at him,” Woohyun says suddenly, face set. “If they do, I’ll destroy their lives.”

Sunggyu stares and Woohyun must feel it because he turns to meet Sunggyu’s gaze. Woohyun just nods tightly, and in that moment they’re united in their protective feelings towards Dongwoo. But then Woohyun looks away, and Sunggyu is left feeling a little unbalanced. Why can he never decide how to feel about his roommates?

The audience bursts into applause (and laughter) when the lights go down, an electric buzz of anticipation hanging over the room. But by the time the third act—“Ausdruckstanz: Despair”—is halfway through, the vibe has shifted to restlessness.

“Apparently this isn’t as funny as people thought it was going to be,” Sungjong observes in an undertone as some horribly discordant shrieks that Sunggyu would never call music screeches out of the speakers and a pair of puke-green-clad dancers roll around on the floor of the stage. It isn’t funny at all, Sunggyu thinks, and actually quite boring to watch. The audience seems to agree, since he can hear people having full-on conversations behind him, and when he glances back he sees that half of them also have out their phones and are typing away, faces lit up with the bluish white of the little screens.

“Why does he have to be the very last one? We have to sit through this whole thing?” Sungyeol complains not very quietly at all, but nobody shushes him. 

By the time they get halfway through the program, though, things start to look up a bit. It’s still not a kind of music Sunggyu enjoys, and the dancing isn’t the most…aesthetically pleasing, either, but the technique is now complicated enough that he can appreciate the skill it takes to pull it off. This isn’t the way he’d choose to spend his Saturday night, probably, but there are worse things than fit dancers in tight leotards bending and stretching their bodies like that.

Fuck, maybe Hoya’s right—he really does need to get laid. 

Half the audience doesn’t come back after intermission, apparently disappointed at the lack of comedy, and the other half use the rest of the time to chat with their friends. Sunggyu feels bad for the performers on stage—even if their dancing isn’t very accessible, they _have_ worked really hard, and it’s got to be really disheartening to know your audience isn’t paying attention, though Sunggyu supposes you can’t really expect better from your average undergrad. Sunggyu crosses his fingers that Dongwoo will be so caught up in the motion—as he often is—that he won’t notice.

Taemin, who’s only a sophomore but is one of the more advanced dancers in the department, is second-to-last, and his routine is actually really amazing. He chose _Ride of the Valkyries_ for his accompaniment and the program indicates he’s trying to convey the feeling of the triumph of glorious death, but Sunggyu doesn’t much care about that, it’s just a really great performance. Apparently the rest of the audience agrees, because he’s the first one to get anything more than a smattering of clapping when his routine is over—the audience reaction is enthusiastic, with a real standing ovation and actual calls of appreciation. Taemin beams wide, winks—probably at Key, knowing him—and bows before racing off the stage.

“This is it!” Woohyun hisses, elbowing Sunggyu in the ribs, and Sunggyu is about to snap that he _knows_ that, he can read a program just fine, thank you very much, but when he looks at Woohyun, Woohyun is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, gnawing at one of his perfectly manicured nails. Sunggyu blinks in shock; he’s never, in all the time he’s known him, seen Woohyun show outward signs of nervousness. But Woohyun’s whole attention is centered on the stage, he’s practically vibrating with anticipation, and it’s just so out of character that Sunggyu isn’t quite sure how to react.

He doesn’t have time to figure it out, though, because the curtains slide open again, and Dongwoo is standing in the middle of the stage in nothing but a pair of practice pants (fuck—is that legal? Sunggyu is pretty sure there’s something in the student handbook about nudity. Not that he’s actually nude, but it’s got to be against the rules to look that good without a shirt on, doesn’t it? And to have hipbones like that—fuck), his head bowed.

Sunggyu waits for the music to start—Dongwoo had refused to tell anyone which piece he’d chosen, no matter how inventively Woohyun asked him—but it…doesn’t. Instead, Dongwoo starts moving in the silence of the hushed theater, and when did everyone stop talking anyway? Sunggyu isn’t sure: maybe Dongwoo’s reputation is enough to command at least a little bit of respect or maybe the fact that Taemin was so great has given the other students hope that this routine might be good, too, or maybe it’s just some sort of aura that Dongwoo is giving off that demands attention, but Sunggyu’s just thankful that people aren’t being rude.

As Dongwoo moves and twists in the spotlight, his skin glints like sunlight on water, and Sunggyu realizes he must have coated his bare torso and limbs with some sort of oil (fuck). In the almost-too-bright spotlight, it creates a serpentine shine that’s really captivating, especially when he starts to move faster, bending and stretching and twisting and leaping. But the music still hasn’t started, the only sound that of his bare feet hitting the ground. At first the lack of accompaniment is jarring, almost uncomfortable, especially after the volume and intensity of Taemin’s music, but after a few moments the quiet starts not to matter at all. How can it matter, when Dongwoo is moving like that? The drumming of his feet on the wood of the stage, the way his skin shines as the muscles ripple underneath, the fluid grace of each movement, the beatific look on his face (Sunggyu can’t help but wonder if that’s the face he makes during sex, and when he drags his eyes away for the briefest moment to glance at Woohyun, something about the way that Woohyun is looking up at the stage makes him think it is), the confidence he’s emanating—all of it adds up to something absolutely mesmerizing. 

Sunggyu has admired dancers, especially Dongwoo, before. He’s appreciated their athleticism and grace. He’s been caught up in watching them and lost track of time while watching them. But he’s never seen anything like this. This is…art seems to pale a word. Transcendence, maybe. Sunggyu isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to breathe again, but right now he just doesn’t care. 

Dongwoo does one final roll of his body (fuck), then some sort of fancy twist through the air that shouldn’t be humanly possible, and somehow ends back up in the position he started: still in the middle of the stage, hands clasped, head bowed.

In the heart-stopping pause before the audience can react, Sunggyu hears Woohyun swallow hard. “Fuck.”

Sunggyu couldn’t have put it better himself.

And then the whole auditorium is on their feet, the big space filled to the brim with the loudest applause Sunggyu has ever heard—feet stomping and catcalls and whistles, a chant of Dongwoo’s name from one corner, waves and waves of cheers. Sunggyu claps so hard his palms start to itch, but he keeps clapping anyways. And in the moment before the curtains swish back into place, he thinks he sees a grin on Dongwoo’s face.

[source](http://kyu--zizi.tumblr.com/post/30451048009/sexy-yadong-at-backstage)  
[source](http://19901122.tumblr.com/post/24764394146)  
 _[Unfortunately for all of us, there are no gifs of Dongwoo doing a body roll shirtless. You’ll just have to use your imagination to combine these two gifs, okay?]_

 

 

"That was fucking unbelievable!” Sungyeol shouts, flailing his arms around in that way he does when he’s too excited. For once Sunggyu doesn’t mind the shouting—anyone would have to shout to be heard over the excited talking of the rest of the audience as they either mill about, blinking and looking slightly stunned now that the lights are back on, or gesture enthusiastically, starry-eyed, as they talk about Dongwoo’s performance. “Did you even know people could do that?”

“No,” Myungsoo answers, blank-faced (he’s never understood the concept of a rhetorical question): he’s been looking overwhelmed since the curtain fell—either Dongwoo’s performance blew him away that much or he’s just floated off to Myungsoo land, where inanimate objects talk and romance manhwas come to life, as he often does. 99 times out of 100, Sunggyu would suspect the latter, but with how mindblowing Dongwoo was, right now he could believe it’s the former.

“It was incredible,” Sungjong agrees.

“You have no idea,” Hoya says, and Sunggyu turns to him. Sometimes he forgets that Hoya is a dance minor.

“It was that good?” Sunggyu had thought it was, but he’s not the best judge of such things. Hoya, though, he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to dance.

“It was that good,” Hoya confirms, and maybe that’s the highest praise Dongwoo will get all evening. Sunggyu’s never felt so proud in his life. 

“The other girls are going to be so mad they left at intermission!” Bora says, squeezing Sungjong’s hand before reaching into her pocket to pull out her phone—presumably to gloat via text about the performance. “I hope someone recorded it because that’s a youtube sensation if ever I saw one.”

“Hey, where’s Woohyun?” Hoya asks suddenly, and they all look around as though he might be lurking behind one of them. 

“He probably ran off to grab Dongwoo and pull those pants right off him and show him just how much he appreciated the performance,” Sungyeol says with a grin.

The others wince, but Sunggyu doesn’t (fuck). “Uh,” he clears his throat. “I’m going to go—see if I can find him. And congratulate Dongwoo.”

Sungyeol shoots him a look of narrow-eyed skepticism. “After what I just said?”

“Oh, come on, Sungyeol.” Sunggyu’s throat is somehow a bit thick; he forces a laugh to clear it. “They wouldn’t be having sex backstage right in front of everyone else.”

The rest of the guys look skeptical, but Sunggyu walks jerkily away to the side doors leading backstage. Once there, he’s surrounded by the mixed heat of bodies and stage lights. The dancers are mostly still there, thronging in groups to talk with their friends, but Sunggyu doesn’t see Woohyun and Dongwoo anywhere. He spots Taemin almost right away, though, surrounded by his friends and being lifted off the ground by an enthusiastic Jonghyun—which looks really silly considering how much taller Taemin is. 

“You were great,” Sunggyu offers as he passes and catches Taemin’s eye. “Really great.”

“Thanks, hyung!” Taemin answers happily as Key peels Jonghyun off of him. “I think Dongwoo-hyung and Woohyun-hyung went that way.”

“Thanks.” 

He’s wending his way between old set pieces and props from past plays (he’s almost certain that entire box of broken wooden swords is Sungyeol’s handiwork) when he hears Dongwoo’s familiar voice, tilting upward with excited expectation.

“Did you like it, Nam-goon?”

Sunggyu finally spies them between the curtain and a pile of boxes; he ducks behind a wooden board painted to look like a tree—either that or a sea monster, Sunggyu’s not actually sure—and peers around at his roommates. Woohyun has his arms around Dongwoo’s waist, and Dongwoo is hugging Woohyun tight, and the sight of Dongwoo’s oiled skin against Woohyun’s tailored slacks and perfectly fitted shirt—his sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows and baring his forearms in that way that Sunggyu suspects Woohyun knows he finds almost irresistible—is really obscene. Or it would be, except for the fact that the way they’re looking at each other isn’t obscene at all.

“You were amazing,” Woohyun says, and his voice is low but it’s also something Sunggyu isn’t used to hearing from him. Sincere? Sweet? Whatever it is, Dongwoo doesn’t seem surprised by it.

“Yeah?” Dongwoo prompts with a smile that’s softer than the one Sunggyu is used to seeing. 

Woohyun hitches Dongwoo closer. “You were born to dance. I’ve never seen anyone do what you do on stage.”

Dongwoo makes a happy noise, burying his nose in Woohyun’s neck, and Woohyun drops a kiss onto Dongwoo’s collarbone. Sunggyu feels like his intestines are tying themselves into bows.

“You made the right decision,” Woohyun continues, in that same low voice, and Dongwoo raises his head to blink up at him. “I know you sometimes worry that you should have made a more practical choice in your major,” Woohyun clarifies. “But this is _right_ for you. You couldn’t possibly do anything else. And you don’t need to worry about money—I will always take care of you. Always. And when I’ve made all my money, I’ll sponsor all kinds of dance programs. I’ll be the greatest patron of the arts that dance has ever seen in this country. So just do what you love and don’t worry anymore, okay?”

Dongwoo’s grin has been growing bigger and bigger as Woohyun speaks, and by the time Woohyun finishes and kisses Dongwoo’s nose, it’s so wide that it looks like it will split his face right in half. Dongwoo leans up to kiss Woohyun, and Sunggyu recognizes that kind of kiss—that’s the way his parents kiss each other when they’ve made each other happy, when they’re proud of their kids, when they’re just glad to see each other. Fuck.

“The two of us. Always?” Dongwoo asks as he pulls back, that beatific grin still on his face.

“Always,” Woohyun confirms. “The two of us. Unless we can ever get Sunggyu to come around, and then it’ll be three.”

Dongwoo sighs, wilting just a little. “He doesn’t understand how much he needs us, does he?” Then he brightens. “But he’ll have to eventually, won’t he? He’ll have to!”

Woohyun smiles. “Even that hamster hyung can’t be that oblivious. I bet he won’t make it two months past graduation before he wants to move back in with us. And then it’ll be the three of us together in some awesome apartment, and you’ll dance and teach if you want, and after I graduate I’ll go to the office every morning, and Sunggyu can design his bridges or whatever during the day and then we’ll both go watch him sing at night. And maybe one day you’ll dance to music he’s singing on a stage in a concert hall my money built.”

“That sounds perfect!” Dongwoo sighs happily.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Woohyun says with a smile that’s not the slightest bit greasy at all.

Sunggyu bangs his head against the tree/monster hybrid and moans. 

“I am so fucked.”

 

 

[source](http://kaburagi.tumblr.com/post/9508412894)

Sungyeol wants everybody to come back to their apartment—“ _My_ apartment,” Woohyun corrects—for a party, and Hoya and Sungjong sound pretty excited about it, but for once Woohyun isn’t the slightest bit interested. He loves a good party, doesn’t mind getting wasted and sleeping on someone’s kitchen floor—what else is college for? He’s got to get his wild oats out of his system now, right?—and Sungyeol’s tend to be among the best if only for reasons of enthusiasm and randomness (one ended up involving an alpaca, though Woohyun’s still not sure what that was about). But right now all he wants to do is get Dongwoo home as soon as possible and spend the rest of the night in bed. Normally when he’s seen Dongwoo dance, they don’t even make it halfway home before they have to find some corner or empty classroom or something because the distance across campus and then three blocks further to their apartment is just _way_ too far for them to keep their hands to themselves. But even though he’s still really turned on— _really_ turned on—by the way Dongwoo danced, that’s not the only thing on Woohyun’s mind. As hot as the lust is in his veins, the warm buzz of happiness is stronger and has been since he hunted down Dongwoo backstage and they solidified their plans for the future for the first time. It’s not that Woohyun had ever thought Dongwoo would reject him, exactly, it’s just that he’d never really let himself verbalize his vision of the future. But as he’d sat there in the audience being reminded once again of how amazing Dongwoo is, with Sunggyu just beside him and just as enthralled by Dongwoo, he’d known that that’s exactly how he wanted it to be for…forever, really. He’s just completely uninterested in any future that doesn’t involve Dongwoo and Sunggyu being with him. Completely uninterested.

Having Dongwoo agree had changed the whole tenor of the night, blunting the edges of need until it became something more intimate. Tonight is a night for a bed, Woohyun thinks, and nothing else will do.

They haven’t even been making out on the way back, either, just holding hands and swinging them back and forth, laughing about nothing (it’s easy to do with Dongwoo) as they walk home. They hadn’t even taken the time for Dongwoo to change after their friends finished congratulating him and then headed off to the party (Sungyeol isn’t the type to let the fact that the person he’s throwing the party _for_ isn’t there stop him from throwing said party), just pausing so he could tug on his shoes before they slipped out into the night air. Woohyun hands over his jacket—it’s just enough too big on Dongwoo to be endearing—and they head for home, past friends and acquaintances and complete strangers who yell compliments at Dongwoo. Dongwoo blushes as he waves in reply, but he seems oblivious to the more-than-appreciative looks people of every gender give him, and Woohyun doesn’t mind them looking—who could blame them for admiring Dongwoo? (And if one or two of the lusty-eyed ones look like they’re about to approach, well, they’re easy enough to banish with a simple warning look.)

He’s feeling loose and tingly and just really fucking _good_ , but he’s kind of jarred out of it when they walk into the apartment and find Sunggyu standing in the middle of the room, eyebrows dipping in concentration. He doesn’t look like he’d been walking through the room but like he’s been standing there waiting, maybe for some time, which is weird because this is his house: if he was waiting for them, why didn’t he sit down on the couch or go to his own room? Speaking of which, it’s been niggling at the back of Woohyun’s mind that Sunggyu wasn’t with their friends when the other four sought them out backstage, and none of the other guys had known where he was.

But Dongwoo doesn’t notice the strangeness. His face splits into a grin as he rushes to Sunggyu. “Hyung, you disappeared so fast, I wanted to see you! Did you see me? Did you like it? Was I good?”

Sunggyu holds his arms out for Dongwoo to rush into them, and okay, maybe Sunggyu wanted to congratulate Dongwoo at home where it wasn’t so loud and full of people, but then he couldn’t bring himself to sit down while he waited because he was really excited. That’s nice—Dongwoo really values Sunggyu’s opinion, and it will make his night even better to know Sunggyu appreciated his dancing.

“You were amazing, I loved it,” Sunggyu answers, confirming Woohyun’s thoughts—but then the next second Woohyun doesn’t have any thoughts at all because Sunggyu tugs Dongwoo right up against him and then _kisses_ him.

_What. The. Fuck._

Woohyun is frozen in place as he watches his roommates kiss—or at least watches Sunggyu kiss Dongwoo; Dongwoo seems just as surprised as Woohyun—only able to gape in complete shock even when Sunggyu pulls back and Dongwoo makes a half-confused, half-scared squeaky noise, his eyes huge. Then Sunggyu nudges Dongwoo’s forehead with his own and says, “ _You_ are amazing.”

And that’s when the fury explodes through Woohyun’s veins. He’s over to the other two before he even has to think about it, pulling Dongwoo out of Sunggyu’s arms and shoving him behind him. “Oh, so _now_ you want a piece of him? Now that you’ve seen him dance and watched people lose their minds over him? He wasn’t even tempting before, but now you decide he is? What the _fuck_ , hyung, how could you—“

But then Sunggyu grabs his wrist and jerks _Woohyun_ to him, and when he fastens his lips on Woohyun’s, all Woohyun’s anger turns into completely confused heat and it fireworks behind his eyes somewhere (honestly, it feels something like those Pop Rocks he used to eat as a kid—only times a thousand). Woohyun thinks he hears Dongwoo gasp behind him, but it doesn’t register: Woohyun has fantasized about Sunggyu’s mouth practically since they met—he doesn’t remember the specifics just now, but he’s pretty sure it involved Sunggyu yelling at him and him staring, enthralled by how wide Sunggyu opens his mouth when he’s lecturing—but the feel of those lips against his is more than he’d let himself hope: different than Dongwoo’s, but just as incredible. 

But when Sunggyu finally releases him and he staggers back a half-step, the aftershocks of the explosions still rocketing through his head, Woohyun is still so fucking confused that the only reaction he can latch onto is anger. “What the _fuck_ is this, hyung?” he demands, maybe a little breathless.

“This is the three of us,” Sunggyu says, and he sounds a little bit breathless, too, and his eyes are a little too bright behind his glasses, and Woohyun would say that he’s drunk or he’s taken something, except he knows that isn’t possible because Sunggyu was with him all night: he didn’t have time to get wasted or high. “Isn’t that what you two want?”

Woohyun, for once in his life, cannot think of a single thing to say. He just stands there staring at Sunggyu, and it’s Dongwoo who finally speaks, voice very small in his confusion, “But, hyung, you didn’t want us before. You didn’t.”

The look Sunggyu gives Dongwoo is both fond and exasperated. It’s a look he gives Dongwoo a lot (always trying to hide the fondness and not managing it very well), but right now it seems intensified. “I did want you, I just didn’t think I could have what I wanted.”

And again, anger is the only emotion that can break through the tangle of all the feelings churning inside Woohyun. “What the fuck does that mean? We made it more than clear what we wanted! You’re the one who elucidated in great detail about how we were destroying your life! And now you’re all turned on because Dongwoo danced and you want to relieve your sexual frustration that you didn’t even need to have in the first place? Well, not tonight, hyung. Tonight isn’t about that, so you’re just going to have be satisfied with your hand or go find a freshman or something, because we’re going to our room.”

He grabs Dongwoo’s hand and starts towards the bedroom, but he hasn’t made it two steps before Sunggyu is in front of them, his arms slipping around their waists.

“You’re misunderstanding,” Sunggyu says, and he’s still got that same look of affectionate frustration, only now it’s trained on _Woohyun_ , and Woohyun can quite confidently say that Sunggyu has never looked at him like that in the entire time they’ve known each other, and what the fuck is going on? Maybe Sunggyu did pop something during the performance while Woohyun wasn’t paying attention and now he really _is_ high? That’s not like Sunggyu—he’ll drink, sure, but Woohyun’s never known him to experiment with anything harder than weed—but it’s the only explanation Woohyun can think of.

Woohyun goes very rigid in Sunggyu’s arms and asks between gritted teeth, “How could I possibly be misunderstanding?”

“Stupid tree,” Sunggyu says, the frustration melting away and leaving only a warm smile behind. He bumps his head against Woohyun’s—again, something he’s never once done—before turning to press a kiss to a still-confused Dongwoo’s forehead. “I thought it was just sex. I thought you just wanted a fuck with me and then you’d forget all about it once you got me out of your system. And you really can’t blame me: you didn’t give me much of a reason to believe otherwise. You’re both such _idiots_ —why didn’t you just tell me what you really wanted?”

“Hyung, what are you talking about?” Again, Dongwoo’s voice is so much quieter and more hesitant than usual, and he just blinks in surprise when Sunggyu kisses him again, deep and sweet. 

When the kiss is over, Sunggyu is smiling, wide and sure as he looks back and forth between them, and this isn’t a side of him Woohyun has ever seen before. This isn’t his grumpy grandpa of a roommate who lives to lecture Woohyun on his lack of respect for personal property but is incapable of staying mad when Dongwoo does the laundry and turns all of his socks pink. This is…this is new. “I’m talking about us,” Sunggyu says. “The three of us. Always.”

And then it clicks. Sunggyu is kissing Dongwoo again, only this time Dongwoo is kissing back, and both of them are _really into_ it, but Woohyun can’t even concentrate enough to feel left out because he’s too busy watching as it all comes together in his mind. Sunggyu wants what they wanted all along. Woohyun had thought they’d have to trick him into it: make themselves indispensible in practical ways, then show him how awesome the sex could be, and sooner or later he’d just sort of fall into a relationship with them without even realizing it. But he wanted this _all along_?

Woohyun thinks he should probably be upset about that, angry with himself for not just coming out and saying what they wanted, angry with Sunggyu for being so stubborn. But now Sunggyu is pulling away from Dongwoo and kissing _him_ , and Dongwoo is pressed right up against both of them, and Woohyun can smell them both—Dongwoo’s sweat dried on his skin from his performance, Sunggyu’s laundry detergent and the aftershave his sister gave him for his birthday—and they’re only a few feet away from the bed he knows for a fact is big enough to accommodate all of them and this is how it’s going to be from here on out: the three of them. (Always.)

A minute later and the kissing has turned from sweet to heated and they’re tugging at each others’ clothes, exchanging kisses left and right and stumbling in the direction of the bedroom. But Woohyun can’t help it: he has to pause in unbuttoning Sunggyu’s shirt and letting Dongwoo’s fingers loosen his belt to get one thing out of his system.

“Fuck yeah!” Woohyun shouts, indulging in verbal crudity because nothing else will suffice, not for this moment. “And Sungyeol said we’d never get you in bed!”

And then of course Sunggyu smacks him upside the head and starts lecturing him between kisses, which causes Dongwoo to giggle so hard that he ends up tripping over his pants that are somehow around his ankles and they all end up on the floor and it takes them a minute to right themselves and then make it the rest of the way to the bed, but whatever: it was totally worth it.

 

 

  
Myungsoo is sucking away at the smoothie Sungyeol bought him as they head up the stairs towards Sunggyu’s apartment, sucking in that way that makes the really loud and obnoxious noise telling you that there’s really not anymore liquid left so why don’t you just give up already, and it should probably be annoying but Sungyeol’s used to it by now so he doesn’t really mind. “Are you sure he wasn’t lying?” Myungsoo asks around his straw for the fourth time.

Sungyeol understands why he keeps asking, but shakes his head. “He wouldn’t lie about this. He’d know I would have to verify it with Sunggyu-hyung himself and that hyung would get _really pissed_ if Woohyun was spreading rumors that weren’t true. It has to have happened.” He snorts. “Though I can’t imagine how it did. I guess they wore him down by torturing him for so long that he went through with it just to get them to leave him alone. Maybe we should write to the UN to inform them that torture is effective after all.”

“Lemme see the text again,” Myungsoo prompts, and Sungyeol sighs and pulls his phone out of his pants, handing it over to his boyfriend. He remembers all too clearly each word of the text he received at 2:03 AM this morning. He’d been one drink away from falling into oblivion at the time so he’d told himself he was hallucinating before promptly downing that last drink and surrendering to the darkness. But this afternoon when he woke up at almost 3:00, dislodging Myungsoo from where he was sleeping on top of him and then chasing the last stragglers from the party—half of whom he didn’t even know—out of the apartment, the text had still been there. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry, but as he had a splitting headache he didn’t really do either and tried his best not to think about it. But now, hours later, his head reasonably back under control thanks to some tending by his boyfriend (Myungsoo, weirdly, has the highest alcohol tolerance of all their friends and had just fallen asleep on top of Sungyeol because that’s how he likes to sleep because he’s a weirdo; he hadn’t even felt a twinge of pain when he woke up, the little bastard), the words are still the same. 

 

_And once again I prove that you completely underestimate me, Lee Sungyeol. Haven’t you learned by now the foolishness of doubting my powers of persuasion? I **always** get what I want._

Myungsoo scrolls down to the text that arrived a half second after the first one. _P.S. Remind me to inform hyung’s vocal performance professor that he even stays on-key when screaming in ecstasy. Surely he deserves extra credit for that; I’m sure Dr. Kwon will be proud._

 

“Woohyun-hyung’s the only person I know who uses correct grammar and punctuation in his texts. Except for my mom,” Myungsoo notes absently. “Weird that you haven’t heard from him since, even when you called. I would’ve thought he’d want to gloat some more.”

 

Sungyeol rolls his eyes. It’s almost 9:00 at night now, and he still hasn’t been able to get in touch with Woohyun—hence the reason for their visit. He would have come by earlier but he was still recovering from his hangover and then he had to take Myungsoo out for smoothies to thank him for nursing him back to health. “They’ve probably been trying to keep him in some sort of sex-induced haze out of fear of what’s going to happen when he comes to his senses and realizes what he’s done.”

 

Myungsoo has finally accepted that he’s not going to get another sip of his smoothie but keeps chewing on his straw as they round the last flight of stairs. “Either that or they’ve really won him over and completely brainwashed him.”

“What, you think everything’s going to be some sort of domestic paradise now? All of them staring at each other with hearts in their eyes and calling each other pet names? Do you know our friends at all?”

Myungsoo shrugs and knocks on the door, gnawing away at his straw. Despite the fact that the door is always unlocked when any of the residents are home, both Myungsoo and Sungyeol have learned the hard way never to just barge into this apartment unannounced—Sungyeol has seen things that he’s sure have left scar tissue on his eyeballs—so they wait.

The door flies open after a minute, revealing Woohyun in a pair of pajama pants and sporting some serious bedhead. 

“Hi, guys!” a boxer-clad Dongwoo exclaims (and yes, they are the horrifying pig boxers that no one is sure of the origin of and that no one, not even Woohyun, can get him to throw away), hurling himself against Woohyun’s back and latching on. “Did you have fun at the party? I bet you didn’t have as much fun as we had!”

Sungyeol and Myungsoo exchange glances, but then from inside the apartment they hear Sunggyu’s voice bellowing.

“NAM WOOHYUN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY CLOTHES?”

Woohyun spins around, still with Dongwoo plastered against him, and puts his hands on his hips. “Seriously, hyung, how many times have I told you that animal print on a grown man is a heinous act of fashion terrorism? It’s only acceptable on small children and rich old ladies. I was doing you a favor by cutting it into strips—my grandma quilts, I’m sure she’ll be very appreciative when I give her the fabric.”

Sunggyu barrels into view, also in pajamas—really ugly ones—and with a furious glare on his face. “And how many times have _I_ told _you_ that my stuff is _my stuff_ and if you touch it again I’ll castrate you?”

“Oh, hyung, please don’t get mad, Nam-goon was just trying to help!”

“Don’t you dare defend him! I saw you with scissors, too! Help? Are you serious right now?”

Sungyeol reaches out, grabs the doorknob and calmly pulls the door closed. As he and Myungsoo stand there, they hear several crashes and a shriek that could either be someone in pain or someone in the throes of pleasure. Sungyeol gives Myungsoo a look.

“Told you.”

 

[](http://penny-lane-42.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/370/116410) Let me know the source if you know it!


End file.
